1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to data conversion from one format to another and, more particularly, to extraction of textual data from a data structure of a computer aided drafting (CAD) program for input to different software.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the last twenty years, computer-aided drafting (CAD) has gained widespread use in engineering departments and consulting firms throughout the world. Recently, CAD software executing on personal computers has seen increased use. There are likely millions of drawings stored in CAD files. Even within a single company, there may be hundreds or thousands of drawings. Many of these drawings could be reused with little or no changes. However, with such large numbers of drawings many of which may have been produced by someone other than the person needing the drawing, it can be very difficult to locate a desired drawing.
Various attempts have been made to categorize and index drawings. While some of the methods used can be very helpful, the time required to input the data necessary to make these indexing systems work is significant. Existing data input methods make crude attempts to simplify the process, but typically require a great deal of manual input. Programmer's toolkits are available that provide interface routines to CAD files, but no prior art application software is known to exist.